The best productivity tools for charities (show & tell)
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NetSquared London April 25, 2017 presentation from the NetSquared London team. https://www.meetup.com/netsquaredlondon/events/237546621/ In this meetup, we'll run through some of our favourite tools for getting charity operations done cheaply and effectively. We'll explain how charities can access IT discounts and donations and tackle the process of finding the tech that helps the most when you don't necessarily have the time to research. We'll also discuss strategies to kick off digital transformation / transition within charities. This will be an open space to discuss any tools you've found particularly useful that others might find beneficial, and will provide a chance for questions if you have a problem to overcome but don't know what tools are best suited to help. Drinks and pizza will be sponsored by Technology Trust, which is a charity that exists to help other charities with IT. They run the UK's only software donation programme called tt-exchange.
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The best productivity tools for charities (show & tell)
- 1. Productivity Tools for Charities SHOW & TELL
- 2. AGENDA Strategy: make sure you aren’t wasting time Tools for finding your own tools Show and tell: best of breed / how to access & use
- 4. Getting buy-in from the top Finding the right tools for your cause
- 8. 1. What is your mission? 2. What is your strategy? 3. What is essential? 4. What are your main pain points? 5. What solutions exist?
- 10. 1. Best of breed 2. Great user experience 3. Short learning curve 4. Cloud based 5. Companion mobile app 6. Short contract 7. Open API linking to other platforms 8. Charity discounts 9. Regular updates 10. Zero setup / minimal configuration
- 17. ©JamesGadsbyPeet
- 22. Charity Catalogue aims to help non-profits easily and quickly discover the best online tools and resources to help them level up their impact! Laurie, cat aficionado
- 25. The presentation was made using:
- 30. Productivity Google Docs Microsoft Excel Dropbox Outlook Calendar Asana Trello Acrobat Evernote / OneNote
- 31. Reporting Salesforce Zapier QlikView AmazonWeb Server Google Analytics for Google Sheets
- 32. Design Adobe Photoshop Indesign / Illustrator Adobe Stock Adobe Spark Canva Piktochart
- 34. Web analytics Google Analytics Hotjar Optimizely GoogleTag Manager Instapage
- 35. Web outreach TrustPilot Hootsuite Social media Ads Google AdWords (grants)
- 38. THANK YOU Pub?
Editor's Notes
- We WILL go through tech tools we’re using, how to access them, etc. Before that, we’re going to talk about a couple of other important bits: 1 - how to make sure the good tools you find actually get adopted. 2 - how you can find your own tools beyond evenings like this – i.e. the platforms/methods/shortcuts for finding tools. Hopefully together, this will provide a full picture of how to make some real progress for your charities.
- Who has tried to adopt a new tool and it not been adopted? At Technology Trust, we try something new every week. This week, I’ve been doing some web design, so have tried Invision, Sketch, WPEngine, SiteGround, plus the Google Analytics / Sheets integration. That’s fine when it’s just for a few people but implementing tech tools across organisation is much harder. The challenge really is changing people’s behaviour, rather than the tech itself. It’s hard for us - we’ve changed our task/project management tools, comms tools too, but with effort - and we’re a tech organisation! There are good reasons: You work for your cause, not necessarily because you’re keen on efficiency gains People could have worked in charity for ages, don’t see need to change Sometimes tech really isn’t the answer Past IT projects may have failed (Also just because people like what they know) So how do you start the ball rolling? How do you transition into an org that move quickly when opportunities arise?
- There’s two parts: (1) finding the right tool for your cause and (2) getting buy-in at a senior level. Without both, it’s really difficult to make serious progress.
- 1: Digital champion You could have the best tool in the world, but if trying to change culture from side or below, won’t happen; it falls on deaf ears. The answer isn’t always digital, but having trustee or CEO who will consider it is vital. If none of your trustees are willing to consider digital options, then get one who will.
- If you need to convince board, then there are loads of reports on why they’re useful. Technology Trust blog, Charity Digital News, DotEveryone (nee Go-On), etc. The Charity Digital Toolkit also has some good resources on that. Beyond that, larger charities sometimes take ‘innovation leads’ or ‘head of innovation’ to pioneer organisational change, although this usually takes a trustee to push through. At smaller scale, it comes down to everyone present along with buy-in from board. Even then, it’s tricky - you need to show you’re making progress for the cause. That comes down to finding the right tool.
- 2: finding the right tool. The best platform in the world without digital champion falls on deaf ears. But also a digital champion who can’t say, “This will help our cause” also doesn’t work. A combo of the two is needed. The tools we’ll go through are all free/cheap, but finding them, adopting them, getting wider adoption takes time. Picking the right ones to start with is important. The easiest way of doing that is to start with your cause
- 4) difficulties - what are the main blockers to successful strategy? Finding the main pain point – strategic: Could find from stats Could survey staff Could be simple conversations with management Often it’s fairly obvious Looking for solutions without knowing what you’re trying to achieve doesn’t really work.
- Every pain-point you could ever want to remedy exists somewhere. The best of breeds change all the time, so it comes down to regularly thinking about your cause and knowing the shortcuts to find stuff: (Will come onto shortcuts soon) G2 Crowd, Capterra (both Gartner), Google search, PC Advisor.co.uk, PC Mag.com reviews are awesome, Software Advice.com Charity Catalogue, TT Charity Marketplace + tt-exchange Make longlist, look at reviews online, make shortlist, trial 3-5. Judge against your values. Adopt.
- Technology Trust - case study of choosing Expensify. This was less about fulfilling the charity mission and more about the pain-point, but the time taken to print etc. was extreme and all needed approval by CEO, which took time from strategic work. (Which is a kind way of saying he didn’t like doing it!) We looked around, tried a few, matched against these criteria. Expensify is just one such example of us doing this.
- The Charity Catalogue is a curated list of resources for charities. It’s possible to see which products and tools are either for free or offer discounts for NFPs. Various categories, currently seven out of 27 are live. Work in progress
- It’s for charities and non-profit organisations, irrespective of their size and income
- Across many platforms, we see that charity comms professionals regardless of the size of their organisation, have the same questions when it comes to resources and tools to use. We believe there are a plethora of tools/services both freely available and discounted that could introduce huge efficiencies/increase in engagement. But it’s rather difficult to find at a glance the tools that other professionals in the charity sector are using.
- Laurie and I met at barcampNFP during a session asking for your favourite tools run by James Peet. These sessions have consistently been one of the most popular sessions at barcamp https://medium.com/william-joseph/the-digital-tools-that-charities-are-using-e0c2a9aa4ee9
- So we started a very simple spreadsheet and started to collectively work on categories and exporting it into a wordpress site.
- A couple months in and we finally launched the catalogue! :)
- The Charity Catalogue aims to help non-profits easily and quickly discover the best online tools and resources that will help them level up their impact!
- So what’s next? Iteration, feedback, sharing and promoting the catalogue
- But mostly we need you! Charity Catalogue is a new service - please help us improve! 👉 Take our survey: https://goo.gl/forms/zYW8r38kgE0MQH7L2 Join our team and help link us with other organisations that might be interested in circulating to their audience Spread the catalogue love! :)
- Show and tell - what’s your favourite tool? Which categories would you like to see?
- Thank you and please check out www.charitycatalogue.com
- Xero (Sage, QuickBooks) - £17 p/m (25% off) ReceiptBank - £10 p/m Expensify – about £10 p/m
- Slack - free up to 250, 85% discount Outlook - £1.50 p/m Citrix GoToMeeting - £11 to get 50% discount Google Hangouts - free
- Google Docs - free Microsoft Excel - £25 (£1.50 p/m) Dropbox (Box) - Outlook Calendar - as part of O365 Trello (Favro) free Asana - Free Acrobat - £48 Evernote (OneNote) - Free
- Salesforce - free up to 10 users (Zoho, HubSpot) Zapier - £20 p/m QlikView - Donated MySQL Databases / Amazon Web Server - £50 (Azure is free) Google Analytics for sheets
- Photoshop - £24 InDesign (Quark / Publisher) - 60% discount Illustrator - 60% discount Adobe Stock - £20 p/m Adobe Spark – free Piktochart - £30 for a year
- GoDaddy - £21 bundle WordPress - Free (themes about £60) Drupal - Free CloudFlare - Free (then £20 p/m) WPEngine - £20 p/m Webmaster tools - Free Freshdesk - Free Zendesk - £100 p/m
- Google Analytics - free Hotjar - free Optimizely - free Google Tag Manager (Facebook pixel etc.) - free Instapage (Unbounce) - £12 p/m
- Trustpilot (Feefo) Hootsuite - Free Facebook Ads (HubSpot)
- tt-mail - worked out by calculator – price per email sent. Comparable to MailChimp when you get beyond free levels. (Cheaper than Marketo / HubSpot) MimeMail - free Trustpilot - above Outlook - O365 - £1.50 per user per month or £25 through tt-exchange
- Misc: PeopleHR Eventbrite - £200 credit for £20 on tt-exchange AirBnB Social Experiences - free Fundraising platforms? Payment platforms?
- Thank you!! Follow up: Find the write up of tools – please share Sign up for next meetup Tell friends Go to pub Some useful articles: https://www.technology-trust.org/charity-practical-steps-improve-digital/ https://www.technology-trust.org/it-charity-governance-change/ https://products.office.com/en-gb/nonprofit/office-365-nonprofit-plans-and-pricing https://www.technology-trust.org/choosing-expensify-charity-decision/ https://www.technology-trust.org/payment-gateway-small-charity/